Suspect demanded sex from female students in exchange for support
A man was arrested in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region for allegedly raping underage women for nine years, the local government told the Global Times Thursday.
Wang Jie claimed himself as the founder of a charity website which raises funds for poor students in the Longlin county since 2006. He threatened to withhold financial support to female students unless they agreed to have sex with him, and also encouraged poor students to have sex with potential donors, the China Youth Daily reported.
An official of the Longlin county publicity department, who requested anonymity, confirmed Wang's arrest.
"But the county government has not been provided with information about the victims, as police are still investigating," he said.
The website was removed as of Thursday. Wang had previously claimed that the website had received 7 million yuan ($1.1 million) for the past nine years and had supported 4,000 students from poor rural areas.
Wang also allegedly gave more than 10 sex videos showing him raping young girls to potential donors, and told them that he could provide young girls to them, the China Youth Daily reported.
Lu Yun (pseudonym), one of the victims who was raped by Wang when she was 12 after she applied for financial aid, told the China Youth Daily that Wang filmed the first rape and forced her to have regular sex with him by threatening her with the sex video.
Wang also allegedly told Lu that she could get 10,000 yuan if she introduced students aged 14 or 15 to have sex with donors.
Longlin was one of the 592 "national level poverty-stricken counties" in China, and the central government has allocated sufficient fund to support the education of local children, the official said.
After the case was exposed, more than 40 grass-roots NGOs in Guangxi gathered this month and approved an industry code to prevent other cases.
The code calls on all grassroots NGOs to be transparent and establish grievance mechanisms to improve the situation.
Zhao Hong, a Guangdong-based lawyer and the secretary-general of an NGO which raises funds for poor students and elderly people, told the Global Times that civil affairs departments should better supervise grass-roots NGOs.
"Local governments should conduct more rigorous audits of NGOs," Zhao said, adding that most of the 40 NGOs at the meeting were not registered.
Zhao said that the government should make it easier for NGOs to get accredited to better monitor their activities.
